While I had some passing
reservations about Lyrita's set of two
Elgar symphonies (SRCD221)
there is nothing found wanting about
the present release.

This is a magically
haunting collection of miniature orchestral
pieces by four composers central to
the English Musical Renaissance. Boult
knew these works from their earliest
performing days and in the case of the
Butterworth championed them throughout
his long conducting career. He knew
the composers and there is a sureness
of purpose and rightness about these
readings. This would shine through even
if the sounds were less golden. In fact
this comes from one of Lyrita's prime
periods when from about 1978 to 1983
recordings were made and poured out
onto the market in quantity. The two
English Idylls lack only less vanilla
titles to make them indelibly memorable.
Everything else is in place. Butterworth,
destined for death in the Somme, would
perhaps have stood higher than any of
his contemporaries had he lived on.
On the showing of these short pieces
he took something from Ravel in impressionistic
textures, something from Delius and
Vaughan Williams or perhaps they from
him and much from the graces and airs
of the English countryside of the idealised
imagination. These readings are sumptuously
envisioned and realised and the sound
is to match. The sleekness of the violins
bespeaks luxury.

The Idylls first surfaced
in the early 1970s on a Neville Dilkes/English
Sinfonia collection. These Boult/Lyritas
were their second recording. Microphone
placement guaranteed that every lilting
golden lisp can be heard. The engineer
shows his affection for the woodwind
time and again. The swooping harp figures
that plunge across the soundscape at
2:38 are deliciously memorable and contribute
stunningly to the memorable glow of
this recording. A Shropshire Lad
is even more ambitious. It had been
recorded by Boult for Decca in the 1950s.
Better though to make comparison with
the ancient but still better than decent
sounding 1950s Pye recording now on
Dutton. This current version bids fair
to be the best ever recording though.
Pacing, atmosphere and structural attention
place this in the select pantheon of
recorded British music.

Both Butterworth and
Howells enjoy substantial selections
of music. Between them come two pieces,
one by Warlock the other by Patrick
Hadley. The Warlock is An Old Song
for small orchestra. It is his earliest
orchestral piece and was to have been
one movement of a Celtic Triad for
orchestra. An Old Song is broodingly
Delian in the manner of the North
Country Sketches but with a warmer
languor. The composer said the piece
was very much of the Cornish
moor where had been living during the
Great War. The song referred tom is
a Scottish one: There was anes a
May.

Another Celtic voice
can be heard in Hadley's One Morning
in Springtime,written as
a birthday present for RVW's 70th birthday.
Here the languor of An Old Song is
tempered by the breezes that rustle
the coppices and forests. Its bloom
is still slow and its aeration can be
compared with the lightness of palette
found in the Butterworth pieces rather
than the mossy decay of the Warlock.

Howells dedicated Procession
to Arthur Benjamin as a piece for
solo piano. He orchestrated it for the
1922 Proms when in its resplendent Russian
colours must have rung well with the
new wild world of Goossens, Bliss and
Walton. It is barbaric and would fit
well in a concert including the Ravel
orchestration of Pictures from an
Exhibition. It is in the grand Slav
tradition of an approaching cavalcade
that reaches the listener and then recedes
into the distance à la Procession
of the Sardar from Ippolitov-Ivanov's
Caucasian Sketches.

Merry Eye is
from another world but just as bright
as Procession. That orchestral
piano is rather Petrushka-like
mixed with Bax's fake Russian manner
as in Gopak. The exuberant effervescent
and Graingerian Merry-eye was
written in Gloucestershire in 1920 during
Howells’ honeymoon.

After the gaudy and
then the carefree comes the melancholic
in the form of the yearning Elegy for
solo viola, string quartet and string
orchestra. This is more sumptuously
recorded and performed than the competition
from Richard Hickox on Chandos. Elegy
is dedicated to ‘Bunny’ Warren,
killed in action at Mons on 3 March
1916. The viola cuts an emotionally
poignant swathe through the tumult of
the strings at 2:22. Effectively written
up in Stephen Lloyd's accompanying notes
for this release - he points out that
both Howells and Boult lived into ripe
old age and died within a day of each
other in February 1983. You may possibly
have been expecting something Tallis-like
but the Elegy does not track
that path.

Music for a Prince
is in two parts. Corydon's Dance
was originally the ‘Bunny’ movement
from Howells’ suite The Bs. Bunny
was the very same Francis Purcell
Warren in whose memory the Elegy
was written. Corydon's Dance
is a gentle pastoral and the Scherzo
in Arden likewise although instantly
more airy and mercurially flowing. It
too though has some Delian asides as
warm air and stillness flood the veins.
This is dispelled often by the croak
and chirrup of birdsong.

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